Going to tell Aunt Mary about Uncle JohnHe claim he has the misery but he has a lot of fun…

I have written a great deal in this blog about a production of Return To The Forbidden Planet at the Tricycle Theatre in 1985. It is where I met my wife after all (see My Pop Life #190) even though we had to wait three plus years until our first date…

It was also where I met Hereward K who was MD of the show, a musicman who would turn up 25 years later in Sussex (see My Pop Life #65) and who made the call on the encore every night. Basically we did the first encore every night, which was the Boris Pickett & The Crypt Kicker Five cartoon song The Monster Mash (it was a Graveyard Smash), memorably covered by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. For this song, as for many of the others in the show, I was on the saxophone, although I should add in passing that we all changed instruments in the show to give the impression that we could all play everything. Thus I was on the drum-kit for Go Now and the bass guitar for All Shook Up, keyboards for Teenager In Love. Or something like that. But generally I was on the alto sax, the same trusty horn I’d bought when 15 years old (see My Pop Life#19).

There are no bad Specialty singles (fact)

But the 3rd encore was Little Richard’s Long Tall Sally and we only did it if the crowd were going apeshit. Which was on average, once a week. Friday night usually. There is an unwritten law in the theatre that Friday night is the best night – people can argue, but it is. Saturday is for people who book in advance and who (in general) sit back with arms folded thinking “go on then – impress me“. We never did Long Tall Sally on a Saturday night.

The key thing about Long Tall Sally was that I was the fella singing it. Probably the worst singer in the company, my only lead vocal contribution during the show was the humiliation of singing the first verse of “Who’s Sorry Now” the 1957 Connie Francis evergreen pop hit – humiliating because the baton was then passed to fellow thesp Nat Augustin (trombone player & Ariel the robot) who warbled magnificat for the rest of the tune. Proper singing mate. So when every seven days Hereward gave us musical max factors the magic signal to go back out there and re-engage with the audience, I would walk up to the lead microphone, strike some kind of archaic pose and snarl “Let’s have some rock ‘n’roll“. Writer and recently-passed legend Bob Carlton used to enjoy that moment, and told me so. He must have liked me, because it was half-way through this production that I upped and left my girlfriend of 9 years, and then found myself without anywhere to live, not for the first time in my life. Homelessness not being a good enough reason to stay in a relationship which has run its course.

I crashed at Simon’s in Stoke Newington for two weeks, then Bob offered me the key to his Bow flat, 22 floors up overlooking the Mile End Road. I spent the summer there while another member of the company, actor Ram John Holder, organised a Housing Association interview for me at West Hampstead. Sometime later that year I moved into a condemned (by a Motorway plan) ground floor flat on Archway Road which I eventually bought, with Jenny.

Meanwhile back on stage I was singing Long Tall Sally all wrong. Ironic this, because Little Richard wrote it to bamboozle his white tribute act Pat Boone who’d taken his vanilla cover of Tutti Frutti to the “top” of the charts (ie number 12) in late 1955 and was sure to attempt a cover of the follow-up single too. According to producer Robert Blackwell ‘Long Tall Sally” was deliberately sped up so that Boone couldn’t follow the words. Well, neither could I. I sang “Long Tall Sally she’s pretty sweet” for example, and the lyrics actually are “…she’s built for speed“. Clear when you know and watch the Youtube clip below but we didn’t have Youtube in 1984 and neither did Pat Boone in 1956. Other notable covers came from Elvis Presley and The Beatles with St Paul singing the ripping falsetto quite impressively. I never had the equipment or the bottle to attempt that kind of singing so I just kind of grunted through it and gave it some animal attitude to cover my vocal shortcomings.

What I found out later was rather amazing though. Future wife Jenny being occasionally out there as an usher, it seems that it was her friend Kate and herself and the other youth theatre crew who kicked up the noise on Friday nights so that they would get an extra song. It’s enough to make a stone heart melt so it is.

Little Richard of course is one of the true originals – full camp, in full make-up, singing about sex & dancing & more sex, he smashed the mid-to-late fifties music scene with his iconoclastic energy and irrepressible confidence & charm. One of a group who changed the world along with Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis. Apparently the song is based on a real woman with only two teeth who used to get drunk on sugared whisky because she had a cold, and then got a worse cold, leading to further tots, but the early verse was written by a young girl who’d won a radio competition :

I saw Uncle John with Long Tall Sally, they saw Aunt Mary coming so they jumped back in the alley

and Richard Penniman did the rest, although he changed her words to “baldheaded Sally…” Clearly a major influence on music in general, in particular he inspired Jimi Hendrix and Prince, both of whom took his extraordinary attitude to showmanship and ran with it. Unlike both of those huge talents, Richard himself is still alive (as of September 2018).

Richard Penniman in 2017

He followed Tutti Frutti and Long Tall Sally with a string of hits – Rip It Up, Ready Teddy, The Girl Can’t Help It, Lucille, Send Me Some Lovin’, Good Golly Miss Molly, Hey Hey Hey Hey, many others. Later on I would discover All Around The World (a B-side) thanks to the film Gremlins. Fantastic song. What an artist. What a wife.

He’s fierce in my dreams, seizing my gutsHe floods me with dreadSoaked in soulHe swims in my eyes by the bedPour myself over himMoon spilling inAnd I wake up alone

This is an incredible song from a deeply talented songwriter and singer who sadly left us at way too young an age. She has many imitators, but none who can match her artistry. I was working on a film called Tower Block on the day she died – 23rd July 2011 – with an accomplished gang which included Russell Tovey, Jack O’Connell, Julie Graham, Nabil Elouahabi, Kano, Montserrat Lombard, Jill Baker and Sheridan Smith. Towards the end of the shoot I was suddenly aware that Sheridan was in floods of tears so I went over and asked her what was wrong. “Amy” she said, “she’s gone“. It was a terrible moment, and without further explanation I knew that she was dead. Sheridan was one of her friends. What an utter and tragic waste, that we all saw enacted in front of our eyes.

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In 1984 I did a play at the Tricycle Theatre in north London called Return To The Forbidden Planet. I played the saxophone. The MD was Hereward Kaye.

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In 2012 I was playing saxophone in The Amy Winehouse Experience at a music festival, with Hereward Kaye’s sons Joe and Rory Kaye, and my wife’s childhood friend Pippa. Wait. I’ll explain.

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Rewind to north west London and two young girls : one with St Lucian parents, one jewish, doing dance routines for their own imaginary TV show. My wife Jenny was the black girl, her best friend was Philippa Randall. They danced together, sang into hairbrushes, choreographed steps and roped in siblings to ‘assist’. As the years went by they stayed in touch, Jenny became an actor, Pippa a nail technician. When Jenny got married, all of Pippa’s family came, when Pippa got married to Tony, Jenny and I went. When Jenny and Pippy’s Nanny Flo died, we all went to the funeral. Then Philippa’s wonderful parents Roy and Robbie decided to move to Spain for their retirement. Pippa and her Prince-lookalike husband Tony joined them. We missed Pippa when she was in Spain but she seemed to like it there and flourished. Her marriage wasn’t working though, despite two beautiful girls Tia Bliss and Lucy Bear. After the inevitable split with Tony, Phillippa came back to the UK with her parents and 2 girls and her new man Joe Kaye, whom she’d met in southern Spain, and whose own parents were also very special, Hereward and Pat. Yes, the same Hereward who’d been my musical director at the Trike. The extended family moved back from the Costa Brava to Linfield, (just outside Haywards Heath a few miles north of Brighton) and Herry & Pat opened a Rock School nearby with Joe, who is a very good guitarist and musician in his own right.

Now : Philippa just happens to be a spitting image of Amy Winehouse, a terrific singer, and being a North London jewess I guess all the pieces were in place. The whole family had come to see The Brighton Beach Boys one night playing our big concert – Sgt Pepper v Pet Sounds and absolutely loved it. Herry’s other son Rory is also a guitarist and now has his own band playing rock. Joe and Philippa asked me to step in on sax for some gigs. I was a huge fan of Amy, so I agreed.

Then I had to learn the songs! I had both LPs, “Frank” was a breath of fresh air in 2003 with it’s jazzy vibe, but certainly didn’t prepare us for Back To Black in 2006 which is quite simply a modern masterpiece. Produced by Mark Ronson, with the analogue old-school New York soul band The Dap-Kings providing almost all the session musicians, as well as being her touring band in 2006, it was a perfect confluence of elements. Every track is special. And having had to learn them all for the horn parts, I can tell you that they have very unusual and intriguing chord sequences. Take “Wake Up Alone” which is the best song on the album for me :

verse : A A G# G# C#m C#m C C

Emaj7 Emaj7 C#m C#m C C F#m F

bridge : Dsus4 D G E7b9 x3

chorus : C Bm E7b9

See what I mean ? I’m joking – that’s for the musos reading. But take my word for it – that’s a wonderful series of chords. The lyrics are even better…

…That silent sense of content that everyone gets

Just disappears as soon as the sun sets…

It is a song of deep longing, unfulfilled. Plenty of water references – he swims in my eyes by the bed is an incredible line, Pour myself over him…. This is soul music, as good as it gets. I never did see Amy live, and I wish I had. I know many who saw the slurring, shaky performances of those last few years. Terribly terribly sad. I prefer to remember her with the swaggering yet vulnerable poise of that incredible show from 2006 in Ireland, at the St James’ Church in Dingle on Dec 3rd, or the Shepherd’s Bush concert from the same year. But I got great pleasure in playing her songs with a lovely tight band based around my friends, old and new and my wife’s friend Pippa, giving her own trembling chutzpah and antsy tottering to the Winehouse legend, tattoos carefully drawn on, beehive in place, that dark trembling voice just about intact.

A remarkable circle of life – Herry and I had played Good Vibrations on stage every night at the Tricycle, the show there, written by Bob Carlton, being a rock’n’roll musical of the sci-fi film Forbidden Planet, which itself is a re-imaging of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. The notable thing about the Tricycle’s production of this show, (which originated at Bubble Theatre and went on to grace the West End), was that it introduced the novel idea of having black actors in the cast – the inhabitants of the magical island – this being part of the theatre’s brief, and their local audience. Ram John Holder played Prospero, and found me a place to live since I was once again homeless as that show ended its run. In a further spiral to this circle, my wife Jenny was schooled at the Tricycle Youth Theatre during the 80s, and is now on the Board of that great venue. Jenny has also performed Amy – at a special celebration fundraiser for Nicholas Kent, who was artistic director of the Tricycle for many years – singing Love Is A Losing Game with Graham Kearns accompanying. I’d love to have seen that, but I saw Jenny rehearsing it many times !

I only played a handful of gigs with the Amy Winehouse Experience, but it was worth it for the opportunity to get inside these tremendous songs. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you, in various incarnations – Amy Winehouse.